Twitter: Using Social Media to Increase Business Success

According to Mashable, The Social Media Guide, Twitter saw a 752% growth in 2008. It’s no wonder everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon.

There are many benefits that come with proper Twitter usage:

• Reinforce your brand and increase awareness by linking your Twitter account with all of your other web outlets.

• Check your Google Analytics; Twitter is a direct source of traffic.

• Network with like minded professionals, potential customers, and other local businesses.

• Tweets are now indexed in Google; we smell potential for organic Google traffic!

What a lot of people don’t realize are the practical uses of this valuable tool. Many businesses recognize the potential with this platform and yet after creating an account, have no clue what to do. It’s important to know about Twitter etiquette, hashtags, practical applications, and more.

Before getting started, there are a few things to remember.

Read more

Blog Year in Review: 2008

So I’ve finally had some time to review some of the analytics of this blog from last year. I figured that sharing what I’m reviewing might help some of you think about your own blogging efforts. And I’m also hopeful that I’ll get some suggestions on improvements from all of you. So here’s a year in review for Real Estate Internet Marketing by Union Street Media.

Business Blogging in Context

I started writing in this blog consistently around February of last year. I’d just come back from my first Inman Connect and figured I had some perspectives of value to share. When I’m blogging I’m getting paid, so it’s important for me to be able to articulate the business objectives for blogging to the guys that sign the paycheck. Here’s what they are: Read more

Online Marketing Data: Which social networking sites are your customers using?

There’s a lot of talk about using social networking sites in online marketing. We often hear how having a profile at one or several social networking sites is a requirement for any sort of serious internet marketing initiative. Especially in real estate, where personal relationships and sphere of influence are recognized aspects of the marketing process.

Hopefully, you know a few things about the demographic that you work with in your business. If so, then you might be able to make use of the information in this Rubicon Consulting report: “Online Communities and Their Impact on Business. Part Three: Web Community and Social Life.” The report is the result of survey information given to 3,036 web users in September 2008. Some of the data points that jumped at me along with a few cobbled together thoughts and reactions after the break. Read more

“Maps and Data” from the Archives of Real Estate Internet Marketing by Union Street Media

Real estate is local. This is a phrase that’s heard all the time. Understanding “local” is a big part of getting marketing right whether your message/conversation is online or offline.

Maps are excellent tools to understand what “local” is. Adding a layer of relevant data on top of geographic data can be the starting point for developing powerful insights into what changes may lie ahead, what audiences you might want to serve more aggressively with your real estate internet marketing, where you might find those audiences and so on.

I’ve dug through the archives of this blog to find past posts about maps and data, for all of you new readers (and old readers who might have missed something previously).

• WSJ and USAToday map the economy (this is an historical post, combine this information with your current understanding)
• New York Fed Mortgage Maps is kept current for some more recent real estate information.
• Hotpads has a real estate foreclosure map of the US. This post shows you how to access it.
• A mashup of all sorts of data from sources like the Census, FBI, etc. displayed on a map.
• Topographic maps with Wikipedia and Panoramio overlays in your hand with Google Earth for the iPhone. This is a how-to article for some basic ways to market real estate on the iPhone or iPod Touch.
• Real Estate Connect in 2009 will be focusing on “global” so why not start by understanding how social networking and media sites are used differently by a global audience? Understand the services used by your audience via mapping.

[This post is an example of a "forgotten in the archives" post as discussed in "Help Your New Readers Find Your Best Old Posts."]

Using Google’s Observations to Improve Your Internet Marketing

Google collects and analyzes a massive amount of information about what interests us, how we use information and where we use information. Teasing insights from that data can have a strong impact on your internet marketing direction, strategies and tactics. Take mobile services, for example.

David Wood writes on his blog about a Google presentation about use of mobile services. The presentation, by Sumit Agarwal who is the product manager for Mobile at Google, includes a lot of insight into Google’s approach to developing applications and is very much worth a read (especially if you’re into developing software).

But from a straight-ahead data standpoint here are some interesting revelations about the way people are using mobile devices and Google’s mobile products:

Read more

Google Analytics Update: Your Internet Marketing Animated

Google Analytics is updating. The stuff they are adding to the tool is bending my brain. For those of you who are diving into your own analytics in support of a data-driven internet marketing strategy you will be very very excited. For those of you not in this category perhaps it is time to start.

And, of course, if you’d rather be taking care of the core aspects of your business (selling real estate or service or products) then be happy that your internet marketing team can now dig a little deeper and tease out a little more insight from Google Analytics.

This video example shows how you can look at the performance of a keyword for your website, tracked over time. How is this useful?

• Quickly show relationships of valuable keywords
• Show how value changes over time (perhaps in relation to market events or your own marketing efforts)
• Show how customer interest changes over time (again, perhaps in relation to events or your own internet marketing)

I should note that this is just one of several new features that are being rolled out. And not even the juiciest (advanced segmentation is the juiciest or maybe the API or maybe…).

How are your real estate customers using social media?

Forrester research has recently updated its social media customer profiling tool to include data from 2008. Many of you in the real estate business have probably been hearing about blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed and other social media technologies for some time now. Some of you are even using social media tools to enhance your real estate business.

But the questions always remain: Are my customers using social media? Am I speaking into a void? I thought only teenagers used blogs

The Forrester Technographics Profile Tool

There seems to be a lot of information, both anecdotal and research-based, that talks about what specific tools or even kinds of tools people are using online. This makes sense because technology vendors need to demonstrate their relevance. There’s less information, however, about why people are using technology.

And the “why” question is important because it helps us to determine which technologies are relevant for our customers. Identifying why people use technology helps us all develop better services and products. Understanding why people use technology brings us closer to understanding how they self-identify.

The Forrester tool helps you understand why people are using social media technology segmented by age, country and gender. Now granted, this is a pretty broad segmentation and I’d sure love to have more psychographic than demographic information. But even so the tool is great to get a start on clearing up misconceptions about what types of people use social media technology.

The identities that the Forrester Tool breaks down are (from most-active to least-active):

• Creators: The people who make social media.
• Critics: The people who respond and comment on social media.
• Collectors: The people who organize social media.
• Joiners: The people who sign up and connect on social media sites.
• Spectators: The people who look at and consume social media.
• Inactives: They don’t do any of this stuff.

For a better understanding, here’s a slide show:

Using the Technographics Tool to Improve Your Real Estate Marketing

Alright, you’ve gone over to the site, played with the pull down menus and seen the pretty charts. Lot of fun right? Well fun isn’t enough (especially these days) so let’s see what we can do with this kind of information to make your internet marketing more successful. Here’s a nice numbered-list to get us started

1. Identify your best audience demographic
2. Discover what your audience likes to do via the Technographic Tool
3. Make changes to your internet marketing that reflect what you know about your audience

Identifying an audience demographic

Hopefully you already know something about the sorts of people you tend to work with in your real estate business. If you don’t, then perhaps you might want to use MSN’s demographic prediction tool. This will at least give you something to get going if you can’t hire a demographics consultant just yet.

For this example, I’m going to use the demo prediction tool to look at the demographics for people searching for “Vermont Real Estate.” The tool tels me I’m looking mostly at a Female demographic aged 35-49.

Discovering what your audience likes to do

Using the information from step one, I fill out the Forrester Technographic Tool. The age demographics don’t match up perfectly so I choose the one that fits best: 35-44.

Turns out that, according to the Tool, my audience is using technology fairly average. They are most below-average as Joiners. They’re most above-average as Critics.

That’s nice. Now what?

Make changes to your marketing based on what you know

Ok, so the audience is unlikely to be Joiners and more likely to be Critics. Perhaps I will reserve some of the resources I would be spending on social networking sites (advertising and participating). Then I can take those resources and re-allocate them to online marketing initiatives which encourage feedback, ratings, comments and other participatory technologies.

Would I make changes to an entire business model based on data collected using MSN’s demo prediction tool and the Forrester Technographic Profile Tool? Nope. But I would use this to make tweaks and start deeper research into my audience.

The Tool is Updated: What are the trends?

Now that you have a sense of what the tool is and how you might use it to help out your real estate business, maybe you’re curious about trending of this sort of data. I heard about this tool being updated from Josh Bernoff (via Twitter of course) and he mentioned that the growth of social media adoption is in the 35-55 year old demographic.

Bernoff has a blog post outlining the changes between 2007 and 2008 in the use of social media. It includes a bar chart showing the changes in each of the categories. The biggest jumps are in Spectators and Critics. There is very modest growth in the Creators category. Here’s what he says about age demographics in his post:

Social activity is way up among 35-to-44 year-olds, especially when it comes to joining social networks and reading and reacting to content. Even among 45-to-54 year-olds, 68% are now Spectators, 24% are Joiners, and only 28% are Inactives.

This is important for anyone who continues to believe that their social media strategy should consist entirely of a Facebook “fan” page and should be run by the college intern. There are some great opportunities ahead using social media as part of your real estate online marketing plan. Do like Bernoff does and use data as your secret weapon.

Conference Dashboard: Vermont 3.0 Creative/Tech Jam

[Update: link to the dashboard itself is fixed. Click here to just go look at the dashboard.]

As mentioned earlier, I’ll be on a panel at the Vermont 3.0 Creative/Tech Jam on Oct 25th at Champlain College here in Burlington, VT. I’m really psyched to be up there with David Gibson from Propeller Media Works and Frank Canovatchel (who, it turns out, was an advisor to USM developer Scott Nellé). Our topic is about building websites and I’m sure between the three of us we’ll be able to handle most any question that comes up. Read a little more about the conference and my fancy conference dashboard after the jump. Read more

Use analytics to make better real estate videos

Making videos for real estate is a time consuming process no matter how you look at it. And you want to be sure you’re getting the best results for the time you spend making, editing and uploading your property videos. Why not use analytics to listen to your customers and let them help you improve your real estate video mojo?

Google is now tracking “drop off” over at YouTube. I haven’t taken the time yet to play with this yet but it looks promising. Here’s why:

• See how long people tend to actually watch the videos you post: make your videos the right length.
• See if there’s a particular room/angle/whatever that tends to turn people off and make them leave: show only the stuff that works.
• See if actual video outperforms slideshow-style video: show the right kind of content.

Of course, the downside is that you have to use the miserable YouTube video compression etc. I think I know how Google is making this analytics tool work and it isn’t incredibly complicated. Perhaps some of the other Flash-based video distribution sites will start offering analytics as well.

Anyone out there using analytics with their real estate videos?

Tweetburner is another tool for social media measurement

Just a quick heads up: Similar to the Cli.gs service is Tweetburner. So far I’m finding that Tweetburner has a prettier interface with charts and all.

Also, it has my requested “time of day” style reports. So you can start to learn when people are paying attention to your Twitter posts

It does give you a slightly longer URL though (twurl.com vs cli.gs) so if you need every precious character then perhaps Cli.gs is the better choice.

keep looking »